


To Fight Aloud Is Very Brave

by englishable



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 05:33:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4251231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishable/pseuds/englishable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When questioned about the dubious history of their teammates during an interview, the same question posed to four different men is bound to generate multiple answers. And it may end up being a public relations disaster, but Natasha and Bruce have to admit that it's kind of endearing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Fight Aloud Is Very Brave

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in response to a prompt on Tumblr; I was asked to choose and discuss the close relationships that Bruce and Natasha have with other characters (two for Bruce, two for Natasha), and this is what happened.

…

_“Thank you again for agreeing to be here with us tonight, sir. We’re very fortunate to have you as a part of this webcast series._

_Now, final talking point for the evening – there are certain members of your team who have what both the global intelligence committee and the general public would consider a questionable history. Some would even say that they pose a threat._

_What is your response to that?”_

…

[TRANSCRIPT: ANTHONY STARK, ALIAS “IRON MAN”] 

Right.

So, I’m gonna start things off by cutting through all the equivocal bullshit and just get it on record that – wait, I can’t? Seriously? I thought those rules only applied to public broadcasts before 10:00 PM. What, so the FCC won’t mind the stuff I said earlier about illegal arms dealers, but the second somebody…

Fine, fine, I get it. Tell that guy in the booth to stop flashing his red light at me.

But anyway, I’m gonna cut through all the prevaricating bullshitand just get it on record that Doctor Banner has always been straightforward with you people. I see no reason why you can’t ask him about this directly, except nobody ever lets him answer important questions because they either forget to invite him – you did at least try, right? He didn’t RSVP? They either forget to invite him at all, or they forget the man has an IQ of over 200.

I get that second part, though. I mean, it’s easy to do. Guy treats it like a double-jointed thumb or something. 

Here, you know what? Let’s do this the old-fashioned Socratic way. I’ll ask the questions, you’ll answer, and maybe we’ll both learn something. But probably just you. Definitely just you. Sound fair? 

You, in the booth, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer – that sound fair? Flash once for yes, twice for no.

Thanks.

Okay, first thing – do you know why Doctor Banner used himself as a test subject in the Biotech Force Enhancement Project?

What’s that? No? Didn’t come up on Google anywhere?

I didn’t think so.

See, gamma radiation is, uh, it’s pretty crazy stuff. We’re talking neutron stars, pulsars, black holes, massive cosmic events like that. There’s even this theory that gamma rays are so powerful they can actually create matter, which is big news if you paid attention in high school at all. It has to do with electron pairs and positron counterparts – I’m not revealing any top-secret information here, by the way, so anybody taking notes can stop right now. This is all introductory textbook reading, everybody knows about it. 

I’m just paraphrasing.

So, long story short, Doctor Banner hoped to utilize a biopharmaceutical serum in conjunction with the potential generative effects of gamma rays. Radiation resistance, basically. Fighting fire with fire. He thought the treatment could be used to repair damaged cell tissue in soldiers or civilians dying of radiation exposure – hey, can I say ‘nuclear fallout’ on this program, or is that too scary for you people? 

‘Chernobyl’? ‘Hiroshima’? Ever ask him about the medical work he’s done in hospitals around the SSR’s old test site at Semipalatinsk?

No again, huh? 

Tut-tut. Nobody does their homework anymore.

And I know it’s kind of hard to imagine looking at something that comes attached to keywords like ‘carcinogenic’ and ‘death ray’ and think, yeah, sure, I can use this to help people, but that’s what Doctor Banner did. That’s what the army told him this project’s end-game was supposed to be.

He didn’t even want to test the process on rats first. If he had, he would’ve found out what was really in the serum they’d provided him with.

Did you catch that last part, kids? Show of hands, come on. Did everybody catch that last part? 

He figured the worst possible outcome would be a painful, slow-ish death inside a lead-lined containment cell, but he tried it on himself because he didn’t want to make anybody else pay for his own mistakes on the off-chance his calculations were incorrect. Which they were, because he hadn’t been given all the necessary information. 

Why? Sorry, did you just ask me why? I thought we agreed I was the one asking questions here.

Because Bruce Banner is a man who puts his money where his mouth is, that’s why.

Then instead he winds up with enough gamma radiation to flatten a city crammed into his amygdala, which I think the average person would find pretty alarming, and if we’re talking straight science he should be dead. But you know what? 

His goals don’t change. 

They really don’t. You realize that? He’s managed to come out the other end of things still wanting to protect people, whether that’s as a physicist or the Jolly Green Giant or the only one who can be counted on not to mouth off for these publicity circus tricks, and after all that he still gets to have his intentions questioned by some two-bit talking head who think they’re being edgy by –

_[inaudible]_

Well, my fellow Americans, it looks like they’ve turned on that flippin’ gosh-darned little red light in the booth again, so this is where we part ways.

And we’re done with this conversation now? Really? We’re finished?

Are you sure? 

…

[TRANSCRIPT: STEVEN ROGERS, ALIAS “CAPTAIN AMERICA”]

I should hope that both the global intelligence committee and the general public will allow Agent Romanoff’s actions to speak in her own defense. They certainly do a better job than I can, and if she really declined to be here then I’m sure she shares that opinion. 

Excuse me? 

Oh. Elaborate. Yes, of course I can.

No, no, that’s not a problem at all. I just thought you’d prefer to pack it in early, since you had Mr. Stark as a guest last night.

_[laughter]_

Ah, well. Let me think. 

Agent Romanoff and I have different approaches to our work. I can’t deny that, and I see no reason why I should have to. A good team is defined by the effective coordination of various perspectives and skill sets – nobody expects you to all think alike, and I doubt that’s possible anyway.

And you could probably spend a while going around about exactly what makes us different, but I think – and this is me speaking, please, I don’t want to put words in anyone else’s mouth – I think it hinges on the fact that I was trained as a soldier and she was trained as a spy.

Have you ever thought much about that distinction, sir?

Look at it this way. During the War – no, wait, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t use that phrase, should I? It means something different for you than it does for me. That’s how it is with everyone, though. My mother, whenever she mentioned the war, she was probably setting up to tell you about the one that ended at Argonne. Or the one with the Irish National Land League, maybe.

How’s that for historical perspective?

But during my war, at least, I was fortunate enough to meet Mr. Kolbe while working with the OSS – have you ever heard of him? Fritz Kolbe? 

Oh, I see. I’m sorry to hear that. I guess most people haven’t.

I’m afraid I never did any missions with him, personally. We conferred briefly about the V-2 program, but the intelligence he provided there allowed us to intercept a second planned strike on Liège. Never took payment, either. He was considered the most important American spy in the war and passed along about 2,600 Nazi documents, all told. And you thought youpushed paper, right?

_[laughter]_

So, you know, uh, it’s odd, reading about what happened to him afterwards.

Maybe that’s because I’m only here for the hindsight, I’ll probably spend years playing catch-up. But he couldn’t find work in the United States, once the war was over. A lot of them couldn’t, actually. The spies who’d switched allegiances. Of course Germany didn’t take him back, either. Ministry after ministry treated him like some kind of leper, even after they’d decided to be honest about everything else. He’s still not in any of their history books.

And I suppose he’s not in the history books here, either.

What I’m trying to get at with all of this is that – soldiers have a battlefront, usually. Soldiers have ranks, and units, and standing orders, and in the end one nation or another will have to take responsibility for what its soldiers accomplish on foreign soil. 

But spies – spies fight different kinds of wars, if you want to put it that way.

They’re often ordered to do things no soldier would ever be asked to, at least not in the light of day. Spies are expected to go where soldiers can’t. Sometimes we even tell ourselves they’re meant to keep wars from happening in the first place, have you heard that one before? Or end them early. Either way. 

And alive or dead, they’re going to be treated as nothing but evidence once that threat has passed – once their particular war is over. That’s the first thing every spy learns about who they are and what role they’re expected to play. 

…So that’s the kind of person Agent Romanoff is. If we’re going to be philosophical.

I also want you to understand very clearly that releasing her records into the public domain was the biggest sacrifice play she could’ve made. If she hadn’t done that, then you and I likely wouldn’t be sitting here to discuss it now. 

Because that’s the real skill set she offers  – she concerns herself with doing what’s necessary, no matter what that entails for her personally and no matter what’ll be said about her afterwards. What’s right is sometimes a different story, and it’s not always the one she can tell if she wants to keep people alive. 

Which in the end is her only real objective, I believe. 

Is there anything further I can share with you, sir? Have we covered everything you wanted to ask?

Then thank you very much for your time.  

…

[TRANSCRIPT: ÞÓRR ÓĐINNIĐR, ALIAS “THOR”] 

And when you ask me this question, my friend, how am I expected to answer? You are speaking of Banner, I presume. 

But am I to pretend that there are not aspects of my own past for which I must be held accountable? Can any person among your race or mine claim such blamelessness? 

No, I agree. 

My father – my father taught me a lesson, some years ago, though I’ve unfortunately taken some time about learning it. I believe the idea exists among many of your own thinkers as well, so I do not feel the need to explain myself at any great length here. But the lesson is that there are two ways by which to reveal the true character of a man. 

One is to give him power, and the other is to take it away.

And I believe Banner has withstood that first test better than most men would have – than most men already have, I should say. You are blessed, I think, that such terrible and awesome strength is wielded by a man who would never seek to use it for his own personal gain. He has never intended to cause you harm, has he? 

No, not when he has been given the choice. Must I explain the difference to you? 

Whatever fears you entertain for him or for the threat he may pose, be assured that he fears himself far more. I do not understand such fears entirely, I must confess, but then his heart is not my own. One need not share a sentiment in order to acknowledge its effect upon another, wouldn’t you agree?

Nor has Banner ever attempted to disavow the work of his hands, however small a role his willpower played in it. He can hold himself accountable for his own past.

That, too, is a sign of character. 

It is also another lesson I am still trying to learn, and one that I would have had others learn as well.

But I know that Banner is a good man. I know that whatever struggles he may yet be made to face are no business of yours or mine to question, and so I have nothing further to say on this matter. 

Now. Shall I teach you the Asgardian word for  _‘farewell’_?  

…

[TRANSCRIPT: CLINTON BARTON, ALIAS “HAWKEYE”] 

All right. Give me a second, lemme think about how I wanna approach that question. 

…Nat and I – well, we’ve known each other for a while. 

I’m kind of speaking relatively, there. People in our line of work see time the same way dogs do, you know, seven years in one, because it’s not exactly something you normally retire from doing. Not a lot of old folks in this business, get me?

But we’ve worked together for about, uh, eight years, at least, and Nat’s always been somebody I could rely on. God only knows how many times she’s saved my rear end from one stupid mistake or another – she definitely couldn’t tell you, because that’s not the kind of thing Nat keeps track of. 

She’s never backed down from putting her own life on the line, for me or anybody else. 

Wait, wait, actually, I’ll explain what I mean. I’ll get back to your question in a minute, but I tell this story to everyone and I don’t think it’s entirely off-tangent. Signal me or something if we start running into overtime.

Okay – do you know anything about how Natasha Romanoff first joined SHIELD?

Yeah, yeah, I know that part. I was there. Every chimpanzee with five spare minutes and a search engine knows that part. I mean about the  _day_  she joined SHIELD, you ever hear about that? No? 

Oh, good. Always fun to be a primary source.

So picture this. It’s November 21st, 2006. I promise the date’ll be important later, sit tight. 

But I’m on my way out the door, because it’s probably close to midnight or something, and suddenly I get called up to Director Fury’s office. They don’t even use the comm system – somebody just drop-kicks me into the nearest elevator before I can ask where the fire is, and says I’m needed immediately.

Well. That put me in about as good a mood as it’d probably put you in, right? Worst words in the English language, I swear. ‘ _We need to talk.’_

_[laughter]_

So, I’m sweating like a pig on my way up, I’m practically running by the time I hit the doors, I step into Nick’s office – and there’s the Black Widow herself, sitting on the edge of her chair like some guilty kid in the principal’s office. 

Now, first I have to think, what the hell? Nick has his gun out on the desk, but he isn’t pointing it at her. Whatever Nat told him before I got there, I think he knew she meant it. 

Turns out she’d used false identification to take a plane from St. Petersburg to Montreal, crossed the border up in Buffalo, sneaked onto three different buses to Baltimore, hitch-hiked the final leg into D.C, and turned herself in at the front desk of SHIELD’s headquarters like some lost kid at Disney World. She had the backpack and everything. 

It was pouring rain that night, too, I remember. They’d brought her up to see him so fast that her shoes were still dripping on the carpet. I’ve never seen a drowned rat before, but I’ll bet it looks a lot like what she did just then. 

And Nick goes,  _‘Agent Barton, have a seat. I believe you’ve met this young woman before?’_

Obviously, I had, I wasn’t gonna to keep up whatever weird pretension he was going for. Once you’ve shot somebody with a tranquilizer gun and had them knock one of your eyeteeth loose, you’re not likely to forget them.

Trust me on that one.

But Nat, she just keeps both hands in her lap – she’d asked them to put cuffs on her, actually, right when she showed up. She stays there and doesn’t say anything, so I sit down in another chair and tell her,  _‘Well, Miss Romanov, good to see you again. By the way, that window’s made of aluminum oxynitride and the air vents don’t lead outside, so now’s probably not the time to try changing your mind.’_

In retrospect, I’m not sure why I told her that. Looked like she could’ve used a laugh, I guess. She probably hadn’t slept in a few days. It wasn’t all that funny. 

Then she stares straight at me, and she says – wait, let’s see if I can get this right. 

A-hem.

_‘Thank you for the advice, Agent Barton.’_ God, you should hear her sometimes. She can crisp her vowels like a schoolmarm when she wants to, it’s bizarre.  _‘And_   _it’s Roman-off.’_

Needless to say, that set the tone for the whole meeting. But if you want my own two cents, here’s the really interesting part. 

I asked Nat – you know, years later, we talked about it. I asked her why she picked that particular week to show up.

I don’t know if you remember this, but that was right around when they were doing all those news stories about Alexander Litivineko’s assassination. He died on November 23rd, come to think of it. A nice slow, painful case of radiation poisoning. If I had to pick a time in recent history when the KGB wasleastlikely let one of its prime assets out of containment – if you’ll excuse the technical language, but that’s how they saw her – but if I had to pick a time, it’d probably be November of 2006. She could’ve waited, right? Or at least that’s what I told her.

And you know what the kid said to me?

November 22nd is her birthday, she said. She was going to turn twenty-two just past midnight.

She explained that – she’d decided that if we were going to execute her anyway, after she’d told us everything she knew about the Federal Security Service’s operations, she figured she might as well get one chance at having some control over how her own life worked out. Nat said, at least it would’ve been symmetrical.

Now, tell me. 

Have you ever heard anybody who talked about themselves like that before? 

 Yeah, me neither. 

And a person who talks like that, a twenty-two year old kid who gets that sort of idea into her head and decides it’s better to die with a clean slate than go on living the way she has – you think you’ve ever gotta seriously worry about her posing a threat? 

I mean, a threat to anybody aside from the people who we really kinda want to be piss-pants terrified of her, because that means she’s doing her job.

No, I didn’t think so. 

Glad we’re on the same page. 

…Oh, oh, and there was this one assignment, I should tell you about this one too. I guess it’s one of those stories you learn to laugh about, eventually. But on this one mission, they sent Nat and me to Budapest, and we were supposed to – 

Huh?

Oh, sure. Got it. 

Sorry, folks, but they’re giving me the signal to wrap things up here. Yeah, I see you, I see you. I’m tired too. Hey, I gotta ask – you’ll make all this available as a transcript on your website later, right? 

For the people who can’t listen?

…

[TRANSCRIPT: NATASHA ROMANOFF, ALIAS “BLACK WIDOW,” FEAT. ROBERT BRUCE BANNER, ALIAS “THE HULK”]

She always gets a certain small, bemused pleasure out of watching Bruce’s face as he reads: he raises and furrows his eyebrows, he sighs or scoffs at all the right parts, he purses and puckers and licks his lips as though the words have a taste he’s been asked to describe.

When he’s finished he smooths out the edges before setting the papers back down, erasing any evidence that he’s touched it. The upside-down title reads ‘EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS – AVENGERS TELL ALL,’ thirty pages in total after she’d printed it off the website and used a binder clip to hold it together.

“So, Doctor Banner.” Natasha takes a long, debonair sip of coffee. “Tell the people what you think.”

Bruce lifts the tea bag out of his mug and lets it drip for a moment. He keeps color-coded wooden boxes of the stuff in his desk, in the kitchen here, which cause both to smell faintly of licorice roots and lemon peel. For balance, he dumps in a packet of jolting, poisonous artificial sweetener.

A spoon clinks lightly around the mug’s rim. 

“I think our old PR team is probably glad you’ve already put them out of a job,” he answers. 

“That was my assessment. We should probably go back to the policy about group press conferences only.” She taps one shoe against the kitchen island’s wood paneling and flips up a corner of the papers. “Unusual bunch, aren’t they?”

“Hmm. No arguments there.” Bruce blows steam off the tea’s surface. “They do grow on you, though, I’ll admit.”

“Yeah, I guess we’ll just have to keep them.”

“I certainly don’t know anyone else who could take them off our hands.”

Natasha sweeps her gaze around the empty, industrial kitchen, out the eastward-facing picture windows. At the moment they are the only two people awake in Stark Tower – it gives them both a sense of ownership over the day, they’ve decided.  

( _“So_ _that’s the kind of person Agent Romanoff is,”_ Steve had put it, Steve who still can’t quite remember that she isn’t an agent anymore.  _“If we’re going to be philosophical._ _”_ )

Then she looks back at Bruce, trying to decide what to do with her hands before she asks her next question. She settles for curling them around the coffee mug and feeling the heat seep through her palms.

A good man, Natasha recalls, as she watches him. A man who puts his money where his mouth is.

(But she could’ve told them all that herself, too. If they’d asked.)

“Were you really expecting the gamma radiation experiment to kill you?”

Bruce seems to be studying his rippled reflection in the tea, but he turns his eyes up to meet hers a moment later.  “Were you really expecting SHIELD to?”

“I took a well-calculated risk.”

“I can’t really say things were well-calculated, on my part.” He sets the tea down. His lips are pursed again, tightly, as though drawing the bitterness out of whatever he wants to say next.  “But it’s kind of hard to look back on something and be objective about it when you know the outcome.”

Natasha swings her other foot. A hard beam of early sunlight falls across the floor, and her shadow flaps quickly through it.

(He’d remembered the rain that night. He’d remembered her in Fury’s office with the wet shoes. He’d remembered the bag she was carrying, when all she herself could remember was how cold and tight and familiar those handcuffs had been around her wrists. 

And it’s still an odd feeling, the idea that she exists in someone else’s memory this way – that she exists somewhere outside of herself, that she can be remade so effortlessly.) 

“Well.” Natasha takes another sip of coffee. “We both had to get here somehow, didn’t we?”

Bruce smiles at her. 

(Perhaps he feels the same way, she thinks. After all, he apparently knows a bit more about creating new matter from nothing. He knows, at least, that it is theoretically possible.) 

“That’s true,” he says. “We did.”

…

_“To fight aloud, is very brave—_  
_But gallanter, I know_  
_Who charge within the bosom  
_ _The Cavalry of Woe—_

_Who win, and nations do not see—_  
_Who fall—and none observe—_  
_Whose dying eyes, no Country  
_ _Regards with patriot love—_

_We trust, in plumed procession_  
_For such, the Angels go—_  
_Rank after Rank, with even feet—  
_ _And Uniforms of Snow.”_

-           _Emily Dickinson_

…


End file.
